Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
2/28/2014
House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) looked beyond Yucca Mountain this week at the Energy Communities Alliance Peer Exchange Meeting and supported movement forward on interim storage. House Republicans have maintained a ‘Yucca-or-bust’ mentality, although there appears to be growing support for interim storage. “I’m still a strong supporter of Yucca Mountain, but Yucca Mountain and a pilot program for interim storage are not mutually exclusive,” Simpson said. “In fact, if you could open Yucca Mountain tomorrow, it would be filled. That’s the reality. So you’re going to have to be looking for either another repository or interim storage or some other thing.” He went on to say some members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee “feel that any movement toward interim storage means you are walking away from Yucca Mountain,” a sentiment he disagreed with. Although he supported interim storage as a possible solution to end the debate, Simpson still said he would continue to provide money to Yucca Mountain in the energy and water appropriations bill.
Notably, Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) last month said he was not against interim storage as well. “Interim storage is not off the table for us, but there has to be an acceptance that there are 30 years and a $50 billion investment in Yucca Mountain,” Shimkus said. “Granted that the SER report from the NRC comes out and says it’s safe for one million years, we would then be able to the debate on interim storage at Yucca Mountain or someplace else, but Yucca always has to be a part of that debate,” he said.
The Senate, for its part, currently has a bill, the “Nuclear Waste Administration Act,” in committee that would implement much of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future’s recommendations, including consent-based interim storage, but delays to the markup of the bill make its future unclear at this point. “I’m going to have to have some conversations with some people in the House Energy and Water Committee, and I know Sen. Feinstein and Sen. Alexander are going to be pushing that on the Senate side,” Simpson said. “I would like them to at least take up Wyden’s bill, and get through the Senate if they could because that gives them some impetus to do a consent-based interim storage facility or free DOE to start looking at those things. We have to get out of this butting heads.”
